HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! Wishing each of you countless blessings in 2026!

Read all about it! Read all about it! THE GAME’s newest issue is here! Have you subscribed to THE GAME newsletter as yet? Please do so, and please encourage others to do the same. This is our final issue of 2025, and these three months have been a great honor for me to lead this incredible newsletter! So many gifted writers and thinkers and doers, so many ways of seeing themselves, and our world, through the lens of games, through the game of life. 

Please consider this not just the last issue of 2025 but also the first issue of 2026! Because we have gathered, yet again, a beautifully diverse range of short pieces I feel will inspire, motivate, make you want to do, well, something different, unique, especially after reading this Issue number 11.

And trust me, you are not the only one who thought this year was rough. But we gotta find hope somewhere, yes? This is why we begin this issue with Evangeline Lawson and Dr. Twyla Baker. Lawson waxes poetic on the meaning of joy, and how to create a “joy arsenal” while also dealing honestly with the harshness of life, but in ways that are healthy and empowering. Likewise, Dr. Baker dives deep into her Indigenous/Native American history and traditions around Winter Solstice, and how we humans, Americans and people everywhere, can learn much from routines and rituals practiced for over a thousand years. Like the importance of rest and self-reflection.

Meanwhile Johanna Schultz-Herman, Adrián Arancibia, and Michael Cohen take us on three very unique journeys, one inside oneself, one to Chile, and one to Paris, to remind us how important both change and challenges are to our growth.

In the GAME TIME section of the newsletter writers Nobuko Miyamoto, Ezekiel Hunt, Michael A. Gonzales, and Tracy MacDonald each stand on business with that word game in fun and dope ways: baseball history from a Japanese American perspective; the beloved game of Spades; how the board game Monopoly helped someone deal with loss and depression; and about the late, great Robert Redford’s landmark film, Quiz Show. 

Additionally, Mopreme Shakur, brother of hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur, gives his thoughts on the word game, ahead of his coming autobiography—This Thug’s Life—about his life and life in music, and his relationship with ‘Pac.

And, last but definitely not least, we have lost many people in 2025, famous people, family members, more. I personally value every single day, every human being. We generally do not run poetry in this newsletter, but April R. Silver’s poem about her father, in his final days, is an absolute must-read, about love, about care, about all of us.

Until next time, much love and peace to you all, and I am out.

Kevin Powell, The Game Editorial Director, is a GRAMMY-nominated poet, humanitarian, author of 16 books, filmmaker, and writer of forthcoming biography of Tupac Shakur.

In my year-end conversations with folks, the general consensus is that 2025 has been pretty hard. Often described as an emotional rollercoaster of shock and grief, stimulated by the unexpected. Politics and personal strife, littered with natural disasters, wars, and inexplicable loss shaped a lot of our sensibilities and discourse. The weight felt unbearable at times, the obstacles unsurmountable. The last quarter seemed like everyone was driven to just “make it.” 

In times of unpredictability, how do we cultivate and maintain joy? 

I’ve learned to accept that tough times are inevitable and decided that I needed to prepare for it. I came up with the idea of building a joy arsenal (because those times resembled battles to me) to combat the possible emotional harm. It mostly consisted of things that never failed to make me happy—the beach, walking outdoors, Love Jones (the movie), Girlfriends (the television series), songs, mostly by Alice Smith, as music generally is a balm to my soul. In these last twelve months though, my banked seeds of happiness evolved because my life did. 

My work as a filmmaker required a lot of travel as I was touring, resulting in me spending considerably more time in hotels, away from the usual creature comforts that put me at ease. Cooking and audiobooks became a lifeline, a reset at times, an ushering-in of peace when things became a bit more chaotic than I expected. 

I discovered new authors and subgenres in the world of fiction, tapping into horror (thank you Tananarive Due) and romance, both of which I typically avoid. I also found that I enjoyed listening to author-read biographies more than reading them from the page. I was elated being able to finish a book, to do something I loved, even though I was being pulled in several directions. 

When back home, fatigued from dining out, I would intentionally cook, often ordering groceries from the return airplane, train or car ride, so I could do so efficiently. Finally, I made use of that gochujang paste and farro in the cabinet, along with reaffirming my love of sardines, while finding yet another use for bell peppers, mushrooms and cilantro. When not crafting recipes, I would read about food and plan for future meals. 

The sweet spot was when I could do both at the same time. 

I would often listen to an audiobook while cooking. I got lost in Kamala Harris’ 107 Days while perfecting vegan jalapeno cornbread. I found that nurturing my body and mind was restorative for me spiritually. It was gratifying discovering another way to incorporate more plant-based items into my culinary creations because as a pretty-much-pescatarian married to a pretty-much-vegan, I embrace the challenge of making things for us that will be both healthy and satisfying, with the collateral benefit being that I would feel better, despite not sleeping in my bed most nights. 

As I reflect on 2025, yes, it was hectic and exhausting at times. I started to feel primed for bad news more than good. But I still can recount moments of delight and levity. It was difficult seeing the destruction of the planet by natural disasters and the disregard of human life. That definitely took its toll. However, I feel like in those arduous moments, I was able to tap into that stored away joy to find things to look forward to and confidently know that regardless of what lies ahead, actualized victories can transcend the vexing.  

Evangeline Lawson is a multi-media storyteller who loves preserving the culture through writing, photography and filmmaking. Her work can be viewed on her website, https://www.evangelinelawson.net/  

When winter settles in on the Plains, you can feel it before the snow ever falls. The scent on the wind changes and the sky changes colors, from the sherbet-colored sunsets of late summer and fall to the steely grays and blues of winter. The sun, arriving late in the morning, crosses the sky ever further to the south, and slips away early, as if it too, needed rest. Our ancestors, being the longest residents of these lands, made note of these things. They always did.

Among the Mandan and Hidatsa of the upper Missouri River, the winter solstice and the time surrounding it marked a sacred, quiet turning point. The longest night of the year is when the land, now embraced by darkness and blanketed with snow, had done its work and the light would begin its slow return. This was not always a dramatic moment announced with ceremony; rather, it was felt. It was known. It was recognized the way you recognize a family member walking into the room without needing to look up.

Historically, by the time of winter solstice the crops of our traditionally and famously agrarian Tribes had long been harvested and stored safely away. The work of the fields was done. The Missouri River ran darker and slower beneath several inches of ice, winding through quiet, tree-lined valleys with only the winter birds, and an occasional loud crack of the ice to break the silence. Families gathered inside their earthlodges, our large traditional dwellings which protected us readily from the cold, as the thick walls held warmth with the fire crackling at the center. Outdoors, winter ruled. Indoors, stories—and the ones who told them—ruled. This is their season; when in absence of the sun, it is our opportunity to carry the light.

Amongst my peoples, some stories belonged only to winter. Creation stories—the legends of our emergence, the lessons of our beginnings, and of how the people came to be—were not told casually or out of season. They were winter stories, protected by the long nights and wintry days. To tell them when the earth was awake and growing would be to disturb a balance that had been carefully maintained since time immemorial.

The Mandan tell of Lone Man and First Creator, legendary figures who shaped the world with intention and patience, and a fair amount of hard and occasionally humorous lessons. In some tellings, Lone Man brought the people up from beneath the earth, teaching them how to live upon its surface—how to farm, how to build, how to be in relationship with one another and with the world around them. These are not stories meant to rush through. They are stories that take their time, just like winter does, and therefore they are told when the hours and days stretch long, and time and days seemed to blend into themselves, as the land slowly inched its way back to the light. 

The Hidatsa speak of emergence as well—of our birth from beneath the waters, of learning how to live properly on the land, of corn as a gift that carries responsibility along with sustenance. The crops we grew were not just food; they are our relatives. In winter, when stores of corn, beans, squash, and sunflower sustained the people, these stories reminded everyone where those gifts came from and why it mattered to care for it properly when the planting season returned. 

Storytelling then, and now, is not a stoic practice regardless of modern stereotypes. Unlike lessons from a book, storytelling is an art and a skill, and the best storytellers could draw people in with animated flourishes and movement, vivid detail, brilliant humor. Children would lean in closer, and Elders would interrupt themselves to laugh, to clarify, to lend dramatic emphasis and remind listeners that this part mattered. The firelight would dance on the walls of the earthlodge, shadows moving as if the stories themselves were alive.

Winter was when knowledge was passed along naturally. Young people learned not just where they came from, but how to behave. Stories carried teachings about humility, about listening more than speaking, and about courage that didn’t need to announce itself. There were stories that explained the stars, stories that explained animals, stories that explained why certain things must be done in certain ways. Winter gave the time for all of it.

And rest—real rest—was understood as sacred.

After months of planting, tending, harvesting, and preparing, winter allowed bodies to recover and spirits to catch up. Constant motion, as we know it today, was not an expectation. There was wisdom in slowing down. Our people understood something that this modern world often forgets, that exhaustion dulls the mind, and that reflection sharpens it. Similar to the manner in which our world breathed through the seasons, with its natural seasons of growth, and seasons of rest, so too did our physical and spiritual selves need these rhythms, in order to flourish.

Today, we may not all gather in earthlodges, but the feeling is still there when winter comes. We gather in community halls, living rooms, classrooms, and kitchens. We tell stories in new ways, perhaps through lectures, sometimes through laughter, sometimes through quiet remembrance—but the purpose remains the same. Winter whispers to us, urging us to pause. To listen. To remember.

For Mandan and Hidatsa people today, the winter solstice is a reminder that our ways of knowing are still relevant. That rest is not something to apologize for, or that we must earn. That storytelling is not simply nostalgic; it is survival, continuity, remembrance and honor. It is a form of resistance against a world that wants us to forget who we are and where we come from.

As the solstice passes and the days begin almost imperceptibly to grow longer, there is comfort in knowing this season carries with it generations of tradition, awaiting our return to their practice. Winters stretching back over centuries have seen our ancestors trusting that light would return, just as they trusted the corn to grow again after the thaw, as they trusted the stories to carry the people forward.

So, when we sit together in winter—sharing food, laughter, and memory—we are doing so much more than passing time. We are honoring an ancient rhythm within ourselves, far too often ignored by modern practice. We are revitalizing a legacy gifted to us by those who came before. And we are preparing, once again, for the seasons of rebirth, growth, and renewal that will surely come.

Winter after all, was never meant to be empty. 

It was meant to be full of stories.

Dr. Twyla Baker is an enrolled citizen of the Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota, where she serves as President of Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College, one of 34 Tribal Colleges in the U.S.

When I was a kid, I dreaded physical education. I was short and chubby and would get winded pretty quick. When kids picked teams for kickball, I’d inevitably be picked last. I still remember what it felt like as each team captain would speak someone’s name and I’d watch, hopeful, as everyone else joined a team, until I was the last one standing there. The sting of being picked last never went away no matter how many times it happened. I remained stubbornly optimistic that one day, I would be deemed important enough to be included.

As social stratification grew ever more complex and nuanced with age, I would continue to be overlooked by my peers. This was made especially clear at the beginning of seventh grade when I moved from the Bay Area to a small, New England suburb. Now if you’re from the Bay, you carry a certain “je ne sais quoi” that doesn’t exactly jive with whatever it is that makes New England, New England. My mom likes to remind me that when she asked me how I liked my new school after my first day, my response was “it’s very beige.” The experience was agonizing at the time, but I learned how to stay true to myself despite the feeling of remaining an outsider.

I found my people in early adulthood—after I’d found my way back to the West Coast—where making life-long friends was as easy as sharing a joint over a conversation about aliens. Artists, musicians, farmers, and creative types were the people I’d been waiting for. The ones, as Jack Kerouac famously said, “who are mad to live, mad to love, mad to be saved” rather than live a mundane existence. Alas, life has taken all of us to different parts of the country and in different chapters of our respective journeys; some of us have become grandparents while others are still parenting young kids. The phone calls and texts are sporadic, we haven’t seen each other in years, but the love is still there, and we can pick up right where we left off no matter how much time has passed. 

My family moved from the Bay to a small town in Ohio during Covid to be closer to my mother-in-law. I was shocked to discover that making friends in middle age has proven to feel like middle school all over again, complete with cliques and mean girls (ahem, women…and also mean men). The insecurities I thought we all collectively conquered by high school graduation seem particularly out-of-place when they’re accompanied by graying hair, wrinkles, and mortgages. Now, however, I’d rather not be included. My people are the ones who show up as their genuine, authentic, heart-centered, and creative selves…and who maybe want to share a joint while talking about aliens.

Johanna Schultz-Herman is a mother, freelance copywriter, grant writer, gardener, fiber artist, and serves on her community government’s Environmental Commission.

As a Chilean Chicano, I come to treasure the trips to homeland more and more as I age. When I was a kid, it was hard to explain to classmates how far away Chile is and how different it was than the rest of the world. Located on the western side of South America, authors have explained that the country of Chile in many ways was an island during the 1800s and 1900s. It was isolated by the broad Pacific Ocean on the west, the sometimes-impassable Andes on the east, the driest desert in the world in the north, and Antarctica to the south. 

Yet it was home. 

It was the place where as a young 20-year-old after a decade away, I went to see my abuelos and family. I remember my aunt and the way she'd lie next to me on a bed watching t.v., calming my breath. She'd take the threads of my hair and stroke them. Almost as a prayer that I'd find home again. 

And what I see in my hometown of Iquique, Chile is beauty of the brown skin of my peoples. Folks with native Aymara and Chango features of Northern Chileans. Children that still play at the family beach. It's a hardscrabble rough sand beach near the downtown of the two of 250,000 people. 

The traditions. 

When I go this time, I know there'll be routines of lunch at my aunt’s. Tea time/onces there as well. And one that I've come to ponder as I age. I know on the last day there, my uncles who range from 58 to 76, will come to apartment my mother lives in. They'll come to "despedir,” to say goodbye. They'll have breakfast of tea and bread and butter. Maybe some olives. They'll have a last conversation as if to say, until the next time. And these days, I don't know if there'll be a next time. As I age to now to 54, I don't know if I will see them all the next time I visit. But the tradition seems timeless. It recalls my abuelo, that used to send us off as kids with our parents. It recalls my father, who'd meet with some of them before he left back to the U.S. It'll be tears and hugs. 

And with the tradition, it is also a message to remember. To not forget. 

A San Diego professor and author, Adrián Arancibia was born in Iquique, Chile.  A cofounder of the Taco Shop Poets and editor of the Taco Shop Poets Anthology: Chorizo Tonguefire, he is the author of three collections of poetry. The latest of which is a collection titled Poems of Exhaustion. Arancibia holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from U.C. San Diego and is a professor of English, Creative Writing, and Chicano Studies.

In the first issue of The Game, I wrote a piece about the “big move” that my wife, Margaret, and I undertook when we shifted from our spacious home on Long Island and relocated to Paris to spend more time with our daughter, Jessica, and our only grandchild, Auguste. Yes, we encountered many obstacles along the way…not the least of which involved adjusting to a two-bedroom apartment in the 17^th arrondissement of the City of Light and doing “simple” things like setting up a bank account and buying a 4K television set that did not include a white line down the middle of the screen. Spending time with our overseas family and savoring French cuisine made it all seem worthwhile.

In our previous life, my wife knew that as the oldest daughter of a traditional Italian family the responsibility to prepare Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners for twenty or so guests fell squarely on her shoulders.  No problem! Everything arrived on the massive dining room table on time, and we never went to bed until every piece of dinnerware was returned to its rightful place…clean and ready for the next huge meal.

As more family members informed us that they would be joining us for Christmas in Paris as the Holiday Season loomed closer on the horizon, my wife took on more stress. We cannot accommodate large gatherings at a table that seats six comfortably. Where could we go that would meet our culinary tastes and provide us with reminders of what we left behind.

We knew the answer: La Coupole. Referring to the legendary Parisian brasserie on Boulevard de Montparnasse, French historian Georges Viaud once remarked: “If the tables [here] could talk, they would tell the story of La Coupole’s role in the history of 20th-century art.” There are those who believe that the ghosts of regular patrons such as Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, André Dérain, Colette, and Tamara de Lempicka emerge through the substantial glass and metal doors and stroll languorously through the enormous Art-Deco dining room to their regular tables.

In later years, it’s been favored by the likes of Edith Piaf, Ernest Hemingway, Albert Camus, Serge Gainsbourg, James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, and Patti Smith. At one of the tables, Camus celebrated his Nobel Prize in literature with friends and fellow writers. At another, Josephine Baker frequently sat. Downstairs, you will find a room dedicated to the iconic Ms. Baker. Who would you prefer to share a dozen or so Christmas Eve oysters fresh from the icy waters of Normandy with than those sainted souls? We found our new holiday tradition in our new hometown…no cooking or cleanup necessary!

Michael Cohen spent over four decades as an educator. He now splits his time between New York and Paris, where he and his wife, Margaret, spend joyous hours with their grandson, Auguste, and his mommas.

These days, names like Ohtani, Suzuki and Yamamoto seem synonymous with the game of baseball. Not always so. Back in the day, my father had big dreams as an ambidextrous pitcher at Hollywood High School. The problem: Mark Miyamoto was Japanese American. He ended up playing for the Los Angeles Nippons, a Japanese American semi-pro team, part of the segregated leagues, sometimes playing folks like Satchel Paige in the Negro Leagues. 

Japanese Americans (JAs) were so crazy about baseball, they found a way to play even when they were in concentration camps during World War II. They were determined to play the game they loved. It created a bit of normalcy for themselves, and expressed their Americanness, even as they were seen as the enemy. Today, JA baseball is very much alive. 

My friend, Dan Kwong, plays for the Li’l Tokio Giants. A multimedia performance artist, Dan’s mom was in Manzanar, a camp 230 miles from Los Angeles, near Death Valley. A couple years ago he got the crazy idea to lead the restoration of the baseball field at Manzanar. Fired up with a passion for THE GAME, this indomitable storyteller inspired volunteers to brave the desert heat and wind to clear the prickly tumbleweed and rebuild the field to the exact dimensions and location it was in 1943. On October 26, 2024, with construction still in progress, Dan Kwong staged a trial doubleheader. It was also the second game of the WORLD SERIES…the Dodgers with Ohtani. 

Manzanar, now a National Historic Site, allowed only a hundred people to attend. Finding their seats on the just finished bleachers, the mostly JA crowd was prepared for the intense desert heat our ancestors endured, but that day it was a mild 80 degrees. Just before the game, players suited up in the 1940s-style uniforms that Dan managed to get made, examined the old catchers gear and gloves players once used. Two players approached the pitcher’s mound.  One kicked the dirt as they looked out at the vast blue sky, distant mountains and restored guard tower that hovered over inmates, maybe a grandfather or an uncle, during their four years as prisoners there. He kicked the dirt again, firmly planting his foot and said: “Now I know why I’m here.”

The game begins. Truthfully, I didn’t expect much. After all, this was not the World Series. But as announcer, Alison de la Cruz (yes a woman) began to call the game, I could see the players, knees bend, cleats digging into the sand. The pitcher winds up and BAM, it’s on!  And it’s SERIOUS. These players are BAD-ASS, names on uniforms like Watanabe, Kosaka, Sakata…no Miyamoto, but hell! It was OUR WORLD SERIES. It was OUR TEAM. It was OUR GAME. It was OUR STORY honored on that diamond.

Nobuko Miyamoto is a songwriter, movement and theater artist whose recent memoir is Not Yo’ Butterfly (University of California Press).

The scent of potlikker and yams fills the room as Billie Holiday, Al Green, and Outkast take turns lending their voice to scratchy vinyl speakers in the background. Around the kitchen table, it’s quiet enough to hear the ruffle of a shuffling deck as the family gets ready for a game of spades. With each whisp of a card being dealt, the atmosphere shifts from jovial to intense. As the first round begins, a year’s worth of bragging rights and peaceful relations are on the line.

With 4 players, each participant gets a hand of 13. If you look up quickly enough, you can catch a glimpse of how pleased each person is with their cards. Bids are made based on how many rounds one thinks they can win, and the aim is for partners to be in sync with each other so they can hit their mark—and that’s where it can get contentious. With children running around, sports on the television, and the clinking of dishes, pots, and bottles, it’s easy to lose track of what cards your partner or opponents lack— or how many hands your team has won in relation to the bid. 

How people play their cards has altered relationships and revealed character. New favorite cousins have emerged with the hard slam of an ace to counter an opponent’s king. Fights have broken out from a sly in-law being caught playing a spade to trump a king of hearts when they still had a queen of the same suit. Young adults have gotten their first lessons on delayed gratification by saving their joker until late in the game to spoil an opponent’s ace of spades. 

In 2025, it’s not rare to hear a younger person say “I don’t know nothing about that. Can we play some Uno?” That’s because Spades isn’t child's play; it’s not something you can win at by simply observing and reacting—it requires concentration, strategy, nonverbal communication, and accountability. It’s a contest where multiple generations shout, celebrate, and learn from one another in a society where cross-age cohesion is often disturbed. And that is why, along with the ecstatic rumble of a table when a cunning play has been made, we need to cherish the classic game of spades. 

Ezekiel Hunt is a writer from the Crenshaw District, Los Angeles. He is an alum of Prairie View A&M University’s Toni Morrison Writing Masterclass and the Columbia University Publishing Program.

Parker Brothers board games were a big part of the Gonzales household in the 1970s. The company was known for Sorry, Clue and Risk, and, amongst our community of friends (i.e. the other kids who lived in our Harlem building), the most popular was Monopoly. Be it at my crib, where two years younger bro Perky was always in the mix, or across the hall at Darryl and Jackie’s apartment, a game of Monopoly could go for hours.

My piece of choice was usually the hat or the car. Though I was straight-up when it came to the rules, inevitability someone would be busted for cheating, or Darryl might get pissed and overturn the board. While there was much frustration and anxiety attached to each session, we were always willing to come back for more a week or two later. 

In the days before video games, Monopoly was the one thing that could keep us in the house even on sunny days. While Monopoly could be used as a tool that taught us about saving money and buying real estate, as well as greed and capitalism, for childhood me and my friends it was a game that brought us together. Twenty-four years later, in the spring of 2000, I was living in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York City. 

In August 1999, my longtime girlfriend died and the move to Brooklyn was a sudden one. Still mourning after dwelling there for six months, with the exception of friends Jerry Rodriguez and Aja Minor, I didn’t know anyone in the neighborhood. 

That changed when I ran into my homegirl Nicole Brewer, a staff stylist at Mode, a full-figured fashion magazine where I contributed essays and interviews. “I live four blocks from you,” she said. “You should come over for game night.” I thought she meant to watch sports on television, but she clarified. “I have board games from my college days and every Friday I do game night with my friends.”

“We’ll see,” I replied. 

Come Friday, tired of being alone sitting in the house playing MJ’s “Remember the Time” over and over, I walked down to Nicole’s building on Park Place. Entering the apartment I was greeted by the heavenly smell of chicken frying while a group of her friends were gathered in the living room sipping cocktails and grooving to the blunted sounds of D’Angelo’s recently released Voodoo. 

After the food was devoured, Nicole brought down the games that included Candy Land, Scrabble and Monopoly, which was picked as the one we’d play. Though I hadn’t rolled dice across a Monopoly game board in decades, it was like visiting an old friend that I didn’t realize I’d missed so much. In addition, it was beautiful to be around fun, smart people talking, laughing and singing along to “Playa Playa.” 

Of course, I became a game night regular. Years later I expressed to Nicole how her kindness, friends and board games revived my spirit during one of the most depressing periods of my life. 

Michael A. Gonzales has written essays for CrimeReads, Oldster, The Evergreen Review, Wire UK, The Paris Review and Lit Hub. His short fiction has appeared in The Oxford American, Killens Review of Arts & Letters, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Obsidian. He lives in Baltimore. 

In Robert Redford’s Quiz Show (1994), the American dream is stripped of its mythology and presented as a parlor game where the cards are marked before the players even take their seats at the table. The film is a scathing criticism of the scandal surrounding the 1950s game show Twenty-One, but its true subject is the moral decay that sets in when a culture mistakes the theater of meritocracy for the reality of a rigged system. 

The premise of the film centers on three men caught in a moral quandary, all victims of the interests of NBC and their corporate sponsor, Geritol. Both entities treat human dignity as an obstacle to overcome in order to boost ratings and sell a false tonic to the American people.

The reigning champion of Twenty-One is Herb Stempel (an unhinged John Turturro), a charmless, desperate savant from Queens who answers every question thrown at him—no matter how difficult or obscure—with ease. Stempel faces an ethical and personal dilemma when the network executives ask him to intentionally botch a question, thus forfeiting his crown to a shiny new contestant.

Charles Van Doren (played by a young, dashing Ralph Fiennes) is the "Golden Boy" the network has chosen as their next champion. Despite his charmed life, Van Doren is burdened by a daunting family pedigree, one that greatly appeals to the producers of the show. His father, the nationally revered Columbia professor and poet Mark Van Doren (wonderfully played by Paul Scofield), has a reputation that his son can’t quite live up to. As a result, Van Doren chooses to let the NBC executives feed him the correct answers so that he’s guaranteed to beat Stempel and continue to win week after week, betraying his own foundational integrity for the intoxicating veneer and glamour of televised fame. (Ironically, he’s a Columbia professor struggling to finish writing a book about “Honest Abe” Lincoln at the time).

Scrutinizing this scandal is a Boy Scout of a lawyer, Dick Goodwin (a perfectly cast Rob Morrow), an earnest, brilliant, and ambitious Congressional attorney who believes he’s the hero of a story about justice, yet finds himself seduced by the very privilege, ease, and Van Doren charm he’s investigating.

The question in question is an easy one about  the film Marty, the Academy award winner for Best Picture. To compensate for plateaued ratings, the producers insist Stempel intentionally answers this simple question incorrectly: On the Waterfront rather than Marty. It’s a particularly humiliating forfeit because almost every American viewer knows the answer. By forcing Stempel to throw his answer away and once again become “a loser,” the network isn't just rigging the game; it’s breaking a man’s spirit to prove its absolute ownership of him, and of the hearts and minds of the American people. When Stempel answers incorrectly, as instructed, the look on his face is one of the most devastating moments of the film, one which Turturro perfectly inhabits. It’s the expression of a man realizing that his intellect—the only thing he truly owned—has been commodified and discarded.

Yet Redford refuses to remake Stempel as a simple martyr. As it turns out, Van Doren wasn’t the only one complicit in this national deception; we learn that before Van Doren, Stempel himself was a willing participant in the network's facade. He too accepted answers, he too cashed the checks and made a killing, and he too reveled in the undeserved adoration of a nation. 

During the hearing, Van Doren, raised in a family built on intellectual and moral integrity, ultimately makes the decision to confess so that he can once again look his father in the eye, look at himself in the mirror, and build a life based on his own merit rather than the provenance of his family. 

When the hearing concludes and Van Doren is implicated, the once-adoring press now mercilessly pursues him down the corridors. Van Doren, who at his core is a man of integrity, expresses relief that the jig is up. Still, it’s clear his life, and the life of his family, will never be the same. 

It’s here, in this particular moment of the film, where we see Turturro at his finest. We watch as a look of sick, regretful shame washes over his face, and it’s crushing to behold. It embodies the haunted realization of a man who, out of egotistical resentment and self-righteousness, spent the entirety of his energy pursuing Van Doren as his enemy, only to see that in destroying his competitor, he’s merely finished the job the network started. He’s ruined not only Van Doren’s life but his own to win a war he waged against the wrong man.

The film invokes an old gambling adage: "In a poker game, if you look around the table and you don’t know who the sucker is, it’s you." Both Van Doren and Stempel, as well as Goodwin, spent their time looking at each other, never realizing they were all suckers in the same high-stakes game. The true tragedy, then, is in the misdirected pursuit. Stempel and Goodwin both fixated on Van Doren, while the "system"—the Geritol executives and network suits—remains comfortably insulated from the scandal. 

Quiz Show is a masterpiece of a film. The dramatic retelling of an American scandal eviscerates a culture that values style over substance, privilege over merit, and profit over personhood. Redford leaves us with a sobering reflection on the American dream: we are often so busy trying to win the game against our fellows that we fail to notice the house has already pocketed the winnings. The final image of the executives laughing in the corridors tells the real story. They understood what the players didn't: in a rigged game, pursuing the opponent is just another way of losing.

Tracy MacDonald is an Emmy and Gold Telly award-winning public television producer and journalist, most recently serving as the Executive Producer of Arts and Culture at Rhode Island PBS and The Public’s radio.

He is here. And dying.

His coughs, hefty and unwholesome
Forecast the inevitable.
Sometimes he yawns, wide-mouthed.
His glassy stares are consistent
Sadly.
His suffering is hard and visible.

There is skin.
There are bones.
His fragile frame is
Locked and contracted, eerily
In a fetal position but with the
Certain promise of death.
Like a twig, there are no leaves
Signaling the promise of growth.

But still, there is breath.
I am grateful for his breathing.
I am thankful that we are breathing
Together, sharing this realm.
His heart is still in motion.
He hasn't given up, though living is hard.
It's not too much
Yet.

I want, for my father
A certain kind of death:
If “any” thing can be designed, for your favor, sir
If “any” thing that possibly exists in this world
And farther, in any imaginable way, for your good,
At any moment, period, or iota of time
Now, yesterday, in parallel universes, and farther

Where "any" be a person, place, thing… or not
Where "any" manifests through
Holes, crevices, canals, spaces
Portals, wombs, or waterways
If "any" thing
Can come together right now, sir
To ease your hurt
May it be so.

If "any" thing can be designed, for your favor, sir
Right now and before -- to cancel your suffering
And forever uproot your enemies at
The source, those now-invisible souls
Whose dirt muddied your soles
Those who misguided your steps
Quieted and made insecure your
Honorable ambitions, and unleashed
Your bitter bites onto innocent flesh...
Then let the design be marked and

Sealed in our forever-consciousness, sir.

May it be so.

If there is "any" sound in this universe
Even the one at the core of your soul
That can, essentially, vibrate magically

To eons ago
Rebirthing your good character and
Easing your hurt
Then may you hear it.
May you feel it.

May everything you hold dear
Everything that ever lifted up
The good in you

Brightened your light and

Widened your famous giant eyes with joy
And unleashed your wisdom
May all those things, sir
Uphold you forever.

Death of pain and suffering

Come here.
Dear Breath of Life

Be Gentle.
Be kind.
Stay Here

Eternally…

April R. Silver is a writer, editor, and cultural arts custodian. She is the editor of Be A Father: To Your Child: Real Talk from Black Men on Family, Love, and Fatherhood. Silver is also the founder of AKILA WORKSONGS, a communications and marketing agency based in Brooklyn, NY.